BARCELONA, Aug 14 (Reuters) – Spanish authorities on Thursday removed the remains of three kings who ruled the Arag\u00f3n region \u200cin the 11th century from a monastery threatened by a \u200cwildfire.<\/p>\n
Their remains were taken to the provincial museum of Huesca, located 80 km (50 \u200bmiles) south of the monastery, for their protection until conditions improve, said the northeastern region’s vice-president Mar Vaquero.<\/p>\n
After the wildfire that had been raging since Monday began moving toward the 10th century San Juan \u200cde la Pe\u00f1a monastery \u2060late on Thursday, concern that it could be engulfed by flames prompted authorities to launch a rescue operation, \u2060Vaquero told reporters.<\/p>\n
An emergency military unit team managed to enter the monastery, located in a mountain range, and take ceremonial clothing belonging \u200bto an \u200b18th century count buried there, before \u200bthe proximity of the \u200cflames forced them to flee.<\/p>\n
The team returned a second time, accompanied by police officers and heritage officials, and removed the remains of the first three kings of Arag\u00f3n \u2014 who ruled between 1035 and 1104 \u2014 from a pantheon within the monastery, as well as some \u200chistorical paintings.<\/p>\n
Vaquero praised the bravery of the \u200brescue team.<\/p>\n
The wildfire had intensified earlier \u200bon Thursday, fuelled by higher \u200btemperatures and strong winds. It has burned more \u200cthan 9,000 hectares and forced the \u200bevacuation of 16 \u200btowns, although the monastery remained unharmed on Friday morning.<\/p>\n
In southern Spain, a much larger wildfire also worsened on Thursday. It \u200bhas so far \u200cburned 31,000 hectares in the province of Huelva and forced \u200bthe evacuation of around 700 people.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Joan Faus; \u200bediting by Charlie Devereux, Aidan Lewis)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BARCELONA, Aug 14 (Reuters) – Spanish authorities on Thursday removed the remains of three kings who ruled the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70435,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[27614,27615,27616,27617,17,10504,16559],"class_list":["post-70434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-11th-century","tag-mar-vaquero","tag-northeastern-region","tag-rescue-operation","tag-spain","tag-spanish-authorities","tag-wildfire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70434\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}